The Made in America: Making Sense of the Progress Over the Last Two Years and How Congress is Doing it to Help Families Recover from the Pandemic
We have made tremendous progress over the past two years. The administration, working with Democrats in Congress, is making an economy that grows from the bottom up and middle out.
The unemployment rate has been low for 50 years. We’ve created 10 million jobs, including almost 700,000 manufacturing jobs. “Made in America” isn’t a slogan but a reality on my watch.
We have more work to do. Inflation – driven by the pandemic and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine – is a global challenge. I know a lot of people have a job and are still struggling to pay for groceries, gas and rent. That’s why I’m so determined to lower costs for families.
It isn’t tough for hard-working Americans to get by. That’s why I took action to ease the burden of student debt for families recovering from the pandemic. Republicans criticized the move, but I will never apologize for helping working- and middle-class Americans as they recover from the pandemic. Especially not to the same Republicans officials who voted for a $2 trillion tax giveaway that mainly benefitted wealthy Americans and the biggest corporations.
And partly because of the actions we’ve taken – including a historic release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve – gas prices are decreasing. They have been down since their peak this summer and they fell 10 cents this week. That is adding up to real savings for families.
Republicans in Congress are doubling down on mega, MAGA trickle-down economics that benefit the wealthy and big corporations. They have laid out their plan very clearly. It would raise your costs and make inflation worse.
Some of the provisions that lower prescription drug costs are going to take effect in January and many Republicans in Congress want to roll them back. The cap on prescription drugs for senior citizens would be removed. The $35-a-month cap on insulin for seniors would be gone. Millions of people would not have the average savings on health care premiums. Republicans would increase those everyday costs.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/opinions/american-people-face-a-choice-joe-biden/index.html
Do We Live in the Shadows of the Democratic Party? The Case of a Small-Scale Corporate Minimum Tax, Sen. Joe Biden,
The Democrats want corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. 55 of the richest corporations in America paid no federal income tax in 2020. No longer. I signed into law a 15% corporate minimum tax. And, I’m keeping my campaign commitment: no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay a single penny more in federal taxes.
Biden said that some Republicans, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, “seemed shocked” when he highlighted their colleagues’ efforts to cut those social safety net programs, holding up a “brochure” with Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott’s plan to require all federal legislation – including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – to be authorized every five years. He brought up quotes from Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, who got booed, and Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee, who was booed.
This is not your father’s Republican party, in fact many of them want a national ban on abortion. I would veto it immediately and if we elected more Senate Democrats and keep the House, I would codify the law in January.
Democracy is being put to the test in America. We are learning what every generation has to learn: nothing about democracy is guaranteed. You have to defend it. Protect it. Choose it.
I am sure that the American People will vote in record numbers once again, and that they will make clear that democracy is both important and important to us as Americans.
Over the last few years, we’ve faced some of the most difficult challenges in our history, but we did not relent. And, I have never been more confident about our future. In 14 days, the American people will decide whether we keep moving forward or go backwards.
Bounds on Budgetary Measures, Debt Ceiling, and the Republicans’ Problem with the Debt-Closure Debt
It will be harder to get a deal on the debt ceiling with only a four seat majority. McCarthy said that cuts to the programs are not on the table. Republicans refuse to look at cuts to defense spending. The only way to balance the budget and tackle a ballooning federal debt is by cutting discretionary spending.
The Republicans are trying to play a game with the Biden administration when they know that they are going to get killed, so they are trying to chicken out. It would be economically destructive and politically suicidal to let the federal government default on its debt. Until Republicans in swing district break ranks and vote with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling, we will probably go through this frightening charade.
Bret: Other than trying to find ways to slow the rate of spending growth, I can’t imagine there would be cuts to either program. They are popular with Republican voters as well. Nothing is going to happen except on a bipartisan basis. Suggestions for fixes that don’t involve a lot of tax increases.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/mass-shootings-police-brutality-debt-ceiling.html
The Challenge of Speakership: Addressing the Debt Ceiling With Fair Paycheck Taxes and Other Implications for Medicare and Social Security
Gail: “I don’t think so.” Well, some people may regard this as a tax increase, but I want to propose some tax fairness. For some reason, Social Security payroll taxation stops at about $160,000. A person making a million dollars a year does not have to pay anything.
Gail: Bret, I spent a lot of my early career — way back in the ’70s — hanging out with the chief of police in New Haven, Ed Morrone, who was just so smart. My husband was a police reporter when he was told that the job of a cop was to keep people who hate each other apart.
A bloc of 20 House Republicans who initially voted against McCarthy for speaker are hoping to play a prominent role in the debate, after they made the debt ceiling a central part of their speakership negotiations. McCarthy said he would not take up a debt ceiling increase without a budget agreement or fiscal reforms, according to a slide presentation obtained by CNN.
The challenge will be balancing the interests of House Republicans eager to use their leverage on the debt ceiling to implement priorities that would otherwise be ignored by the White house and Senate, while also finding a deal with Democrats without being seen as caving into their demands. There is at least one member who can call for a vote to oust McCarthy from the speakership.
It’s a recipe that – some fear – could take the nation to the brink of a potentially cataclysmic default, especially since some positions against raising the limit at all seem intractable.
Further complicating matters House Republicans like Pence and Tim Burchett have made it clear they will not raise the debt ceiling.
Yet with GOP defense hawks and appropriators vowing to protect defense spending, that limits the pool of money on the discretionary side of the budget where they can cut from.
You are always going to have a few that will not vote in favor of everything. So expect those people to exist,” said Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican. That is why it is important to negotiate. We have to act that way because we are a divided Congress.
McCarthy said, “if you read our commitment to America, all we talk about is strengthening Medicare and Social Security.” “I know the president doesn’t want to look at it, but we have to make sure we strengthen those.”
Indeed, Social Security takes up about 21% of the $5.8 trillion the federal government spent in the last fiscal year, while health care programs – namely Medicare, Medicaid, the children’s health insurance program and Affordable Care Act subsidies – account for about 25% of the budget, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The budget goes to a range of discretionary domestic programs, with 15% going to defense and national security.
The conservative crew met Friday morning and Monday to discuss ideas for spending cuts that could achieve a balanced budget within 10 years, and plan to unveil a blueprint outlining their vision in the coming weeks, according to a member involved in the talks.
Ringleaders of the group like Rep. Chip Roy of Texas have been in regular communication with McCarthy, and the group wants to meet with GOP leaders and House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington of Texas as discussions intensify.
“What we will have is a blueprint of what we will be fighting for,” South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, told CNN. Not touching Social Security, not touching Medicare, is what every agency is being looked at for. We’re going to put it out for the American people. And it will shock people. … I think people will like what they see.”
A Democrat’s View of the Debt Ceiling Reduction Causality Debt Problem: Can Congress Stand Against McCarthy’s Plan?
“I want us to be the adults in the room. Massie told reporters there was two things that could be a crisis. It should be taken off the table. … It would give you the time and space, and it would take the pressure off.”
While McCarthy is trying to build conference-wide consensus on what they will propose in exchange for raising the nation’s borrowing limit, some appropriators acknowledged they may wind up on the sidelines of the debate.
“I will be either the beneficiary, or victim, of however that comes out, because we will be getting a (topline spending number) for my subcommittee,” Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, told CNN. “And I’ll be directly affected.”
Everyone is in a camp of not being able to default. The full faith and credit of the country is important, terribly important,” said Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas, a member of the House Budget Committee. It isn’t acceptable to say that we’re going to raise the debt ceiling without restraint.
Massie believes if they can’t agree on increasing the debt ceiling, then they should pass a continuing resolution that will fund the government at 99% of its current levels and be coupled with a debt ceiling increase.
Others are looking at possible contingency plans as well. A plan for budget cuts if the allowable amount of US debt surpasses the country’s gross domestic product is being worked on by the House’s Problem Solvers Caucus. The group is using outside budget experts to help draft the proposal.
If talks between the White House and McCarthy fall apart, the plan would be a default, said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.
The White house has coordinated with congressional Democrats in order to push Republicans to come up with their own proposal, even as they maintained a united front against any actual negotiations.
What do the House Republicans want from the Affordable Care Act? A critical view of McCarthy’s leadership on the problem of middle-of-the-road issues
McCarthy appeared on CBS. “Face the Nation,” where the California Republican said he wanted “to find a reasonable and responsible way that we can lift the debt ceiling, but take control of this runaway spending.”
McCarthy’s pledge, which is backed by former President Donald Trump, provides a window into the complex political dynamics House Republicans confront as they press for negotiations while still working to coalesce around a proposal to put on the table.
White House officials have closely monitored – and wasted no time responding – to House Republican preferences they see as both non-starters on the policy front and politically advantageous.
There are significant questions about whether the Republicans can find the 218 votes they need in the House for anything given their opposition to raising the debt ceiling.
Despite McCarthy moving to take changes off the table, the White House view of Medicare and Social Security is still very much the same.
The White House views framing the programs as strengthening as a way to hide their opposition to structural changes. Absent a clearly articulated proposal from the Republicans, that has become the central point of attack in the debate that is still at an early stage.
He hit notes of his traditional unity message, but also laid out an average joe America vision of middle-of-the road issues, as well as promised to work with the new Republican House leadership.
And he showed a clear contrast between himself and right-wing House Republicans, who couldn’t help themselves, hectoring Biden repeatedly despite newly minted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy explicitly instructing them beforehand not to do so.
The president did not call for a lot of new policy initiatives from the new Congress beyond ending what he called junk fees in travel, entertainment and credit cards. It showed he’s gearing up for campaign mode and that he’s likely going to campaign on what he’s already done by drawing a big-picture distinction between his vision for America and Republicans’.
An Underdog Story of Donald Biden, Left, and Right, or Fentanyl, McCarthy, and the Health Care Debate: The Last Five Years
Lots of surveys show Democrats would prefer someone else to run in 2024 instead of Biden, mostly because of his age — though no one can definitively point to who the alternative should be.
Biden would be the oldest president to run for reelection. And he has suffered from a lack of intensity with rank-and-file Democrats, but he showed in this speech he can ably make and prosecute the case — not just for reelection, but also for Democratic values.
Some of what is likely to make Democrats comfortable is the pluck he showed — the willingness and ability to spar with Republicans and depict them not as normal, but extreme.
The best example of this was on Medicare and Social Security. He accused some of the House Republicans of wanting to cut popular entitlements. He was careful in that section to note that “some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years.”
The exchange removed any comity that was going on earlier in the evening. From then on, Republicans shouted and heckled – with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene accusing Biden of being a “liar” and others yelling out, “It’s your fault!” Biden decried deaths of the drug Fentanyl.
McCarthy, who took 15 rounds to win his speakership because of far-right rejection and his small majority, could clearly be seen shushing his conference at least three times. Biden and Democrats wanted to show that look to the biggest TV audience the president will speak to this year, in order to show that they’re ready for him to announce that he’s going to reelection in four years.
When it comes to an underdog story, Americans love it. That’s especially true today with right- and left-wing populism clearly the hot ticket in politics. Donald Trump and Biden have their roots in populism, which is the idea of the people in power being little guys. They’re modern-day Howard Beales, mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.
Biden went after corporate stock buybacks, oil and gas company profits, Big Pharma, “wealthy tax cheats” and billionaires (hello, Sen. Bernie Sanders).
It was a mixture of left-wing populism and popular policies. He even made news, saying that he is going to “require all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects to be made in America.”
The Case for America: The Investment of America in Innovation, Manufacturing, and the Problem of Defending the Left, as Informed by Biden in Wisconsin
“I will make no apologies that we are investing to make America strong,” Biden said. Investing in American innovation, in industries that will define the future, and that China’s government is intent on dominating, are some of the things we should invest in.
The speech, which lasted more than 7,000 words, was limited to about 200 words.
Biden highlighted the presence of the Ukrainian ambassador in the US and thanked the U.S. for its actions in the war with Russia.
There wasn’t much on either country beyond that. That shows Biden’s campaign will focus on bread-and-butter issues.
It’s difficult to walk, but Biden has tried to do it. Huckabee said that Biden had been taken over by a “woke mob”.
She said that after years of Democrat attacks on law enforcement, violent criminals are free while law-abiding families are afraid.
Biden was talking about the case of an officer beating a man during a traffic stop who died, and said it was up to them. Nichols’ parents were guests of Biden’s. The GOP members were admonishing the mother to stand at times.
“It’s up to all of us,” Biden continued. “We all want the same thing — neighborhoods free of violence, law enforcement who earn the community’s trust, our children to come home safely, equal protection under the law. We have a covenant with each other in America. We know that police officers put their lives on the line every day, and that we ask them to do too much.
Biden actually received bipartisan standing applause, and the way he talked about it was a stark distinction from Republicans’ caricature of Biden as beholden to the extreme left.
In a preview of his argument in the battleground state of Wisconsin in four years’ time, President Biden brought his populist economic messaging to the state on Wednesday, firing back at Republicans and spotlighting US manufacturing.
Biden made clear that he was willing to continue the fight as he hit the road, reigniting the social safety net argument with Republicans that sparked one of the most memorable moments in Tuesday’s speech. The argument highlighted Biden’s attempts to shift his message away from the “extreme MAGA” and “mega-MAGA” talking points of the 2022 midterm election.
Republicans repeatedly heckled Biden during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, ignoring the occasional shushes from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Republicans shouted at Biden during the address because of his approach to various issues, such as immigration, Social Security and Medicare spending.
Lee said in a statement that he hasn’t advocated for abolition of Social Security and Medicare, but for solutions to improve those programs and move them toward solvency. For example, he has endorsed various proposals over the years to raise the Social Security retirement age.
What will the next congress tell us about Medicare and Social Security? When Biden and Woodruff rejoin about Medicare, Social Security, and the lack of consumer choice
PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff asked if he expected the kind of reaction he would get when he spoke in the House chamber.
“From the folks that did it, I was,” Biden said. “The vast of majority of Republicans weren’t that way, but you know, there’s still a significant element of what I call the ‘MAGA Republicans.’”
As for last night’s “conversion” of some Republicans, he offered skepticism during his speech: “I sure hope that’s true. I’ll believe it when I see it when their budget’s laid down with the cuts they’re proposing. But looks like we negotiated a deal last night on the floor of the House of Representatives.”
Biden tried to make a broader argument for collaborating with GOP lawmakers, noting the successes of his first two years in office.
“People sent us a clear message: Fighting for the sake of fighting gets us nowhere. We’re getting things done,” he said, before going on to draw clear arguments against his Republican colleagues.
And he again called on Congress to raise the nation’s debt limit during his earlier remarks, warning against the “chaos” he said Republicans are “suggesting.”
Biden also fired back at a television commentator he heard aboard Air Force One lamenting his focus on junk fees: “Junk fees may not matter to the wealthy people, but they matter of most folks like the home I grew up in. They make it harder to pay your bills, or afford that family trip, by adding hundreds of dollars a month. I know how unfair it feels when a company overcharges you and think they can get away with it.”
In his 2012 congressional campaign comments, he repeatedly said he supported plans to replace Medicare with a system in which the government paid for part of the cost of private plans or traditional Medicare. In one interview with the newspaper, he said he was in favor of restructuring Social Security.
Ryan is trying to reform entitlements and I agree with him. He said that it was premium support and not a voucher. “You get a plan and can supplement it with your own income.”
The ideas of Paul Ryan and other people would give some market forces in there, more consumer choice, and make it so that it isn’t just a system that’s going to be bankrupt.
Tea Party fiscal conservatives like the Club for Growth, the Eagle Forum and the MadisonProject supported him in the race.
DeSantis has yet to announce he if he running for president in 2024, nor has he spoken publicly about his position on the entitlement programs as the governor or Florida, preferring to focus on culture war issues.
The president said in his address that Scott’s plan stated that all federal legislation would end in 5 years. Congress can pass a law again if it’s worth keeping. Medicare and Social Security would be included in all federal legislation, which does not currently require congressional approval.
“I think people who are low income will probably be given coverage that is similar to what they have now,” he said in the interview with the St. Augustine Record. I do not think people like me who have been successful will have to pay more. I will have premium support that’s going to guarantee me a certain amount of coverage.”
“If you want something over and above that, if you want a Cadillac plan or something, then I do think it should be driven by the consumer rather than imposed on the taxpayers,” he added. “And I just think that that makes sense.”
“What I think we need to do for people in my generation particularly, is start to restructure the program, in a way that’s gonna be financially sustainable, both Social Security and Medicare,” he added.
In the CNN interview on January 4, 2013, which was one of his first interviews as a newly-elected member, he hoped Congress would restructure Social Security and Medicare.
The retirement and health care programs of some Republican senators were the subject of speeches by Biden and the White House this week.
Biden didn’t tell his audience in Wisconsin that the videos are from 12 years ago, when Lee was running for the Senate but before he was first elected. Lee was responding to Biden on Wednesday, and pointed out that he added at the 2010 event that those who will retire in the future should have their benefits left untouched.
Scott accused Biden of being confused and dishonest. Scott made a point on Wednesday to argue that his proposal is an effort to deal with all the crazy new laws Congress has passed over the last few years.
Biden may have created an inaccurate impression, however, by mentioning the sunset proposal during the section of the State of the Union in which he discussed the battle over the debt ceiling. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has stated that cuts to Social Security and Medicare are not on the table in the negotiations with the Biden administration.
“He made it clear during the State of the Union that he wanted to make sure Medicare and Social Security were not cut,” Pierre said this week. He has been very clear about it over the past couple of years. The bill from the 1970s is not on the president’s agenda.
Biden correctly cited Johnson’s comments this week. Here’s what Johnson told a Green Bay radio show in August: “We’ve got to turn everything into discretionary spending, so it’s all evaluated, so that we can fix problems or fix programs that are broken, that are going to be going bankrupt. We just keep piling up debt because things are on automatic pilot. When Johnson faced criticism for those remarks at the time, he stood by them and said that was his consistent longtime position.
It’s impossible to definitively fact-check this particular dispute without Johnson specifying how he wants to “fix” and “save” the program. His office did not respond to a CNN request for comment.
In an email to reporters on Thursday, the White House’s deputy press secretary AndrewBates mentioned that Johnson had said that Social Security might be in a Ponzi scheme and that Biden lied about his stance on the program.
“In 1975, he has a bill, a sunset bill,” Scott said on CNN of Biden when he was a freshman senator. “It says, it requires every program to be looked at freshly every four years, not just cost but worthiness.”
How will Congress respond to Republican attacks on Medicare, Social Security and the Affordable Care Act? A reappraisal via e-mailed correspondence to Biden
[Republicans] all raised their hand. Guess what? We accomplished something. Unless they break their word. There will be no cuts in Medicare and Social Security.
How Republicans handle themselves in the next year could affect what kind of foil Biden has in his group during his expected run for presidency, as the fight for which party is most in touch with Americans plays out.